An important and continuing goal in the data storage industry is that of increasing the density of data stored on a medium. For tape storage systems, that goal has lead to increasing the track density in recording tape heads, and decreasing the thickness of the magnetic tape medium. However, the development of small footprint, higher performance tape drive systems has created various problems in the design of a tape head assembly for use in such systems.
Such problems include recording high density patterns on high coercivity tape media. In addition, the tape head assembly must perform read while write operations in both forward and backward direction of tape motion at high tape speeds. Moreover, the tape head assembly must be moveable perpendicular to the direction of tape motion to allow multiple passes of the tape with the head in different cross tape locations. Further, the tape head assembly must provide active track following servo capability. Still further, as the number of recording or reproducing elements on a tape head increases, the spacing between adjacent elements in the tape head is much tighter. In addition, the relatively poor guiding of the tape requires that the spacing between a write element and a read verify in the tape head assembly must decrease in order to ensure that the read is located on the proper written track.
Thus, there exists a need for a multi-element, thin film tape head assembly for use in a tape drive that will use high coercivity half-inch wide tape media (e.g., &gt;1600 Oe Metal Particle) and a high recording density (e.g., 70 kfci base with 200-400 kfci write equalization recording). Such a tape head assembly would perform read while write operations in both forward and backward direction of tape motion at a tape speed of 2-4 m/s, and would be moveable perpendicular to the direction of tape motion to allow multiple passes of the tape. Still further, such a tape head assembly would include 16 tape head elements, would provide active track following servo capability using 6 servo reading elements, and would have alignment between read and write elements of better than 5 .mu.m.